Android: How to Recover Deleted Photos and Files on your Phone or Tablet

Deleting a file unintentionally is something that happens to everyone. Sooner or later, you’ll end up mistakenly pressing that “Delete” button and deleting an important file. On Windows, this can be solved most of the time with a visit to the Recycle Bin and by restoring the item you wrongfully deleted, but things are a little more complicated on Android.

Google’s mobile operating system does not have a location where erased files are stored for recycling. Don’t panic though, there are some specific (and free) apps that you can turn to if you end up deleting that irreplaceable image.

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One of the most famous tools is DiskDigger, which is compatible with any device equipped with Android 2.3 or higher. It scans all your system’s sectors for traces of deleted photos and lets you restore them to your device’s internal memory or send them directly to some cloud storage service (such as Google Drive and Dropbox).

It is necessary to mention that the software performs a limited verification if your cell phone hasn’t been rooted (checking only the cache and thumbnails). On rooted devices, the scanning is much deeper and able to find more results. If you prefer, you can invest $9.53 in the Pro version, which can also find other types of documents (MP4, 3GP, MP3, DOC, PPT, PDF, ZIP, EPUB and several others).

On the PC

Applications installed on your mobile device are not always enough to recycle erroneously deleted files. Our second recommendation is a Windows desktop program that checks the memory of your smartphone or tablet whilst it is connected to the computer through a USB cable. Although it is not free, one of the best options within this segment is Kvisoft Data Recovery.

It was not made specifically for mobile phones – this can also find deleted files from hard disks, thumb drives and even CDs – but it works well here. You can download the trial version and test it for free for a couple of days, but after that you need to purchase a lifetime license to continue using the program. The price is $69.95.

Another cool alternative is the Wondershare Dr.Fone, which, unlike Kvisoft, was developed especially for smartphones. It can even retrieve contacts from your schedule, WhatsApp conversations and call history. Again, you can try the tool for a few days without spending anything but you have to spend out $149 to get all the utility’s features.

Back things up regularly

As the old saying goes, prevention is the best cure. Therefore, it is important to take some measures to avoid getting these headaches in the first place, such as periodically backing up all the data stored on your mobile device. With this, you can expedite the recovery of important information if you accidentally erase something.

For example it is worth having Google Photos installed on your gadget. The application automatically makes a copy of all your photos on a cloud server, and the storage space is unlimited. This means you can save a lifetime of images in your Google account and view them anytime and anywhere as long as you’re connected to the internet. The best thing is: it’s totally for free.